Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance, Volume One Read Online Free PDF Page B

atmosphere thinned, the sky deepened to black, stars came out. There wasold Sol, a yellow star hanging between Sadal Suud and Sadal Melik in Aquarius—only thirty light years to home—
    Kelly heard a faint swishing sound. The light changed, shifting whiteto red. He blinked, looked around in bewilderment.
    Magra Taratempos had disappeared. Low to the left a giant red sun hulked above the horizon; below, the salt marshes swam in a new claret light.
    In amazement Kelly gazed from red sun to planet, back up across the heavens where Magra Taratempos had hung only a moment before.
    “I’ve gone crazy,” said Kelly. “Unless…”
     

     
    Twoor three months before, a peculiar rumor had circulated Bucktown. For lack of better entertainment, the sophisticates of the city had made a joke of the story, until it finally grew stale and was no more heard.
    Kelly, who worked as computer switchman at the astrogation station, was well-acquaintedwith the rumor. It went to the effect that a Han priest, dour and intense under his black cloak, had been tripped into the marsh by a drunken pollen-collector. Like a turtle the priest had shoved his white face out from under the hood of his cloak, and rasped in the pidgin of the planet: “You abuse the priestof Han; you mock us and the name of the Great God. Time is short. The Seventh Year is at hand, and you godless Earth-things will seek to flee, but there will be nowhere for you to go.”
    Such had been the tale. Kelly remembered the pleased excitement which had fluttered from tongue to tongue. He grimaced, examined the sky in new apprehension.
    The facts were before his eyes, undeniable. Magra Taratempos had vanished. In a different quarter of the sky a new sun had appeared.
    Careless of radar tracing, he nosed up and broke entirely clear of the atmosphere. The stellar patterns had changed. Blackness curtained half the sky, with here and there alone spark of a star or the wisp of a far galaxy. To the other quarter a vast blot of light stretched across the sky, a narrow elongated luminosity with a central swelling, the whole peppered with a million tiny points of light.
    Kelly cut the power from his engine; the air-boatdrifted. Unquestionably the luminous blot was a galaxy seen from one of its outer fringes. In ever-growing bewilderment, Kelly looked back at the planet below. To the south he could see the triangular plateau shouldering up from the swamp, and Lake Lenore near Bucktown. Below was the salt marsh, and far to the north, the rugged pile where the Han hadtheir city.
    “Let’s face it,” said Kelly. “Unless I’m out of my mind—and I don’t think I am—the entire planet has been picked up and taken to a new sun…I’ve heard of strange things here and there, but this is it…”
    He felt the weight of the jewel in his pocket, and with it a new thrill of apprehension. To the best of his knowledge theHan priestscould not identify him. At Bucktown it had been Herli and Mapes who had urged him into the escapade, but they would hold their tongues. Ostensibly he had flown to his cabin along the lakeshore, and there was no one to know of his comings and goings…He turned the boat downtoward Bucktown, and a half hourlater landed at his cabin beside Lake Lenore. He had scraped the grease-paint from his face; the cloak he had jettisoned over the swamp; and the jewel still weighedheavy in his pocket.
    The cabin, a low flat-roofed building with aluminum walls and a glass front, appeared strange and unfamiliar in the new light. Kelly walked warily to the door. He looked right and left. No one, nothing was visible. He put his ear to the panel of the door. No sound.
    He slid back the panel, stepped inside, swept the interior with a swift glance. Everything appeared as he had left it.
    He started toward the visiphone, then halted.
    The jewel.
    He took it from his pocket, examined it forthe first time. It was a sphere the size of a golf-ball. The center shone with a sharp green fire,